3 Reasons Why Software Engineers Are Vastly Underrated


#3 Fairness vs. Conformity: People highly value fairness. Interestingly, this bias works against productivity outliers like Software Engineers who can be orders of magnitude more productive than others. An engineer may be able to automate a process so the task of 50 people can be done with 5. People have a hard time accepting that a single person should be compensated an order of magnitude differently than others because that level of disparity seems unfair.

There are also practical reasons. For example, a manager in charge of a large group is indispensable because without them things might quickly degenerate into chaos. Their indispensability creates negotiation leverage. In contrast, the best software engineers are constantly making themselves redundant and leaving behind systems that continue to operate and deliver value even after they have moved on. Only the most enlightened companies truly value these types of people.

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Then he comes up with the to-do list for the software engineers:

#1 Be Awesome: Just because you are an engineer does not mean you are creating tons of value. Are you a multiplier for your colleagues? Are you working on projects that can scale?